Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“I know. There’s a cousin somewhere. Out in Kenya, I think, if he’s still alive. A remittance man. I’m not sure Richard would have liked the idea of his inheriting.”

Black sheep in a family were sometimes paid handsomely to take themselves out of England, with a monthly stipend to smooth their road and nip in the bud any fond thoughts of returning home uninvited.

Elizabeth smiled wryly. “If you’d married Jean, you’d have been looking for a country place, wouldn’t you? This house would have suited you-and that would have suited Richard. But we seldom know how our lives will turn out, do we?”

“Where would you go?” Rutledge asked, keeping to the main point. “To London?”

“I had thought about traveling-” she said vaguely.

“Europe is in a shambles. And I don’t quite picture you in the wilds of America or the missions of China. Like Melinda Crawford.”

One of the puppies, awakened by their voices, yipped from the other room, and Elizabeth turned the subject by saying quickly, “Oh, you must come and see how they’ve grown!”

Which in fact they had. But Rutledge was not to be distracted.

As she handed him one of the puppies to hold, kneeling by the box on the cold hearth, Elizabeth said, “Canada, perhaps.” And then caught herself as she remembered too late that Jean, too, had gone to Canada.

Rutledge pretended he’d made no such connection and admired the puppies. Then he said, “Will you do something for me? You know the Masters family better than I do. Can you ask-skirting the reason why-what Mrs. Masters recalls of a case in London before the war?” He described the Shaw murders for Elizabeth, and the brilliant prosecution that Matthew Sunderland had mounted.

“What in particular do you want to know?” she asked, confused. “This has nothing to do with the murders here, does it?”

“It’s an old case,” he said lightly. “But one I was assigned to when I was young and far from wise. I’d like to know if Sunderland described it to his friends. Or if Raleigh Masters ever discussed it with his wife. At the time it attracted considerable attention-it would be natural to relive it.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Oh-yes. Weren’t you about to ask Raleigh when he had one of his spells? I’ll try to see what I can learn.” It was as if she was grateful that the request was impersonal. “But I don’t know that Bella can tell me much, if it wasn’t Raleigh’s case-”

“I understand that. A shot in the dark, if you will.”

Her eyes probed his face. Then she said, unexpectedly, “Ian, is something about this case worrying you? You haven’t been quite the same since you were here the last time, you know. I shall do this, of course I shall, but if there’s a reason you aren’t telling me, I want you to know that you can trust me-”

He could have told her that she was the one who had changed. Not he.

Hamish said, “Aye, but who planted the seeds of doubt in your head?”

It had been Melinda Crawford…

“It’s not the case itself,” he answered Elizabeth now. “It’s the people who were involved. I’ve been reading through their statements again.”

And as he left the house, he thought they’d come to a sad pass, he and Richard’s widow-lying to each other as they never had before.

Dowling had left a message for him at The Plough. Rutledge walked on to the police station and learned from Sergeant Burke that the Marling inspector was already on his way to Seelyham.

Rutledge asked, “Has anything happened? Am I to follow him?”

Burke shook his head. “I doubt there’s any new development, sir, or I’d have heard it as soon as I came on duty. Constable Smith informed me that Inspector Grimes over in Seelyham had sent a man along to fetch Inspector Dowling, but there mustn’t been any urgency, sir. The inspector waited half an hour at the hotel for you before setting out. I expect it’s no more than a meeting to consider next steps, and Inspector Dowling included you as a courtesy.”

“You shouldna’ have lingered on your ain business,” Hamish scolded. “It’s no’ right to muddle the past wi’ the present.”

When in Rome- Rutledge thought, but this was Marling…

And it was an opportunity to meet Grimes, in Seelyham.

He thanked Burke and was gone.

But he’d no more than turned the crank and started the engine when a young woman stepped out of the hotel’s side door and paused, as if waiting for him to drive on. It wasn’t until he’d climbed behind the wheel that Rutledge, his thoughts far from London, realized he knew her.

It was Nell Shaw’s daughter.

She simply stood there, prepared for rejection.

“Miss Shaw?” he said tentatively. He dredged his memory for a name, and somewhere in the mists of the past, he remembered that she was called Margaret.

Her face, clouded with uncertainty, cleared as he recognized her. “It’s my mother,” she said hurriedly. “I’m so terribly worried about her.”

With a repressed sigh, he asked, “Is she ill? Shall I ask the doctor to come to the hotel?” Nell Shaw was, he thought, a better tactician than half the generals at the Front-But then, as Hamish was pointing out, perhaps she had a better cause. After all, Rutledge was the man who had brought her husband to judgment-and thus to his death. Shifting the burden of his self-doubt to her shoulders, blaming her for demanding what she perceived as justice, was shirking his duty to himself and to the Law.

“I’m sorry-No, she’s in London. I came down alone.”

Thanking God for small mercies, he said more sharply than he’d intended, “I must drive to Seelyham. My business there can’t wait. I’ll have to take you with me. We can talk on the way.”

She hesitated, as if half afraid of him, gnawing her lip like a child.

“Margaret,” he said more gently. “Would you prefer to wait here until I come back? I can’t promise how long it will be. On the other hand, if you drive with me, there won’t be any distractions or interruptions. We can discuss what’s wrong with your mother along the way, and I’ll see you safely home from Seelyham.”

Flushing with embarrassment and gratitude, she nodded, and Rutledge handed her into the passenger’s seat before turning toward the main road out of the village.

As they passed the ironmonger’s, a man leaning wearily against the wall stared blearily at them. Rutledge recognized the drunk, Holcomb, from the night before. Belching heavily, the man turned on his heel and shambled on.

Rutledge wondered if the man was sober enough to make any better sense now. But he couldn’t stop.

Picking up the thread of Margaret Shaw’s earlier remark, he asked, “Why are you worried about your mother?”

“It’s like an obsession,” Miss Shaw told him earnestly, as if relieved to find someone who would listen. She was not as hard as her mother, nor as intelligent, he thought. Sheltered-by choice or by circumstances-she was not worldly, in the true sense. And he wondered if she really understood why her mother was so adamant that the past be expunged.

“Clearing your father’s name?” He glanced toward her.

Her face reddened again. She had that kind of fair complexion that registered shifts in emotion easily. “She’s convinced Papa didn’t kill anyone… she can’t sleep, she can’t eat-it’s all she thinks about!”

“How long has this been going on? All these years? Or since she found the locket?”

“She’s always railed against the jury. But since the locket she’s been like a madwoman.”

“Tell me about finding the locket.”

“There’s nothing to tell. She went next door to help Mr. Cutter as he’d asked, and when she came home she looked sick, as if she was about to lose her dinner. She was that upset, she locked herself in her room. I’ve only known her to do that twice before. The day Papa was taken away, and the day the letter came.”